


After the Buzzer Sounds

by Deastar



Series: To Be Seen Aright [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Backstory, Bondage, Dom/Dom, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Rough Sex, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: No one feels like going out after the loss – Sasha maybe least of all. He trails Zhenya back to their room in the Athletes’ Village in silence.When the door closes behind them, Zhenya sinks down onto the foot of his bed and stares at the wall. Sasha knows the feeling. He sits sideways on the bed next to Zhenya, one leg curled up, one dangling off the bed, and studies Zhenya’s face, so familiar for so many years. He decides he doesn’t need to bother with words – not for this part.He fists a hand in the front of Zhenya’s shirt and tugs, and Zhenya comes along. Their mouths find each other with the ease of long practice.





	After the Buzzer Sounds

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Magyar available: [Lefújás után](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16285640) by [DahliaVariabilis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DahliaVariabilis/pseuds/DahliaVariabilis)



> This story takes place at the Vancouver Olympics during the events of To Be Seen Aright, but you probably don't need to have read that story for this one to make sense.
> 
> Many thanks to werebear for beta-reading!

I.

 

After the buzzer sounds and the Canadians pile together in celebration, the pain’s not over. The Russian media are waiting. Sasha keeps his head down and focuses on getting through it without snapping. He knows the reporters are just doing their job. He just wishes their job didn’t include asking him questions like, “Why couldn’t you find the net?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, quiet. He can hear Zhenya’s voice, just as soft and defeated, in the next stall. “I don’t know.”

No one feels like going out after – Sasha maybe least of all. He trails Zhenya back to their room in the Athletes’ Village in silence.

When the door closes behind them, Zhenya sinks down onto the foot of his bed and stares at the wall. Sasha knows the feeling. He wonders if it’s better or worse to be in Zhenya’s position—to have really made a contribution, played your absolute best, and be let down by your teammates—rather than Sasha’s. It’s a shitty thought any way he approaches it, but that’s all his brain is capable of right now. _I need to shut it off_ , he thinks. _I need…_

He sits sideways on the bed next to Zhenya, one leg curled up, one dangling off the bed, and studies Zhenya’s face, so familiar for so many years. He decides he doesn’t need to bother with words – not for this part.

He fists a hand in the front of Zhenya’s shirt and tugs, and Zhenya comes along. Their mouths find each other with the ease of long practice.

Zhenya was the first person Sasha ever fucked. His was the first body to feel the bite of Sasha’s sadism—sometimes literally—and the first to shake with pleasure under Sasha’s hands. They’d found time at camps and tournaments to try out their dominance on each other, learning as they went, practicing the skills and safeguards that they’d use as adults. Zhenya had indulged Sasha’s taste for pain and humiliation, and Sasha had indulged Zhenya’s taste for bondage and giving orders. Zhenya isn’t Sasha’s true love, but he’s an old and trusted friend, and there’s no one who Sasha would rather take to bed tonight.

When the kiss breaks, Zhenya gives him a shadow of a smile. “Just like old times?”

“Just like old times,” Sasha affirms. He watches Zhenya’s face closely, waiting to see what he’ll do.

Zhenya leans back on his hands and chews on his lip for a second, clearly thinking. Eventually, he asks, “Do you want to scene? Or just fuck?”

Either would help, Sasha thinks, but he knows what he’d prefer. “I’d rather scene, if it’s the same to you.” Sex would be a good distraction, but when it was over, he’d probably still feel just as shitty as he does now; a scene, on the other hand, might take a little bit of the sting away even after it ends.

Zhenya nods at Sasha's answer, relief spreading across his face. “I was hoping you'd say that. Is everything the same—safewords, limits? You’d tell me if there was anything new.” He peers at Sasha intently.

“I would tell you, yeah,” Sasha promises. “But there’s nothing. You?”

“Same old,” Zhenya says, with a soft, rueful smile.

If they hadn’t touched since they were teenagers, it would be different… but the NHL and the Russian national team rub the two of them up against each other more often than that. He knows what to expect from Zhenya, and vice versa. It’s part of why they keep coming back together like this – the comfort of dancing with a partner who knows all your steps.

Zhenya leans further back, all the way onto his elbows—fuck, he’s so fucking _long_ everywhere—and looks Sasha up and down, a hint of challenge in his gaze. “So what do you want from me?”

Sasha considers. He wants distraction, for sure. And although there’s an appealing symmetry to the thought of turning tonight’s nagging humiliation and self-disgust outward, laying into Zhenya that way… ultimately he wants to get _away_ from those feelings, not to spend the next hour wallowing in them. He wants to feel the white-hot, purifying fire of physical violence, instead, swift and brutal—honestly, he’s itching for it.

“I want it fast,” he decides, holding Zhenya’s gaze. “And I want to take it out on you. Physically.”

Zhenya doesn’t have to ask what “it” is. He was there, too—for the game, and for the inquisition afterward. He just nods his assent, unsurprised, and says, “No blood, and no bruises that won’t clear up in a few days.”

That’s more generous than Zhenya usually is… but then, their Games are over. No need to strip down in the locker room and expose any marks until the NHL season starts up again, days from now.

“Thank you,” Sasha responds, his pulse starting to race as he imagines what Zhenya might let him do. He throws his left leg across Zhenya’s hips, straddling him, and leans down for a second kiss, more heated than their first. “What about you, Zhenya – what do you want from _me_?”

A grin spreads across Zhenya’s face, tired but real, and a spark of mischief gleams in his eyes. “I want it _slow_ ,” he purrs, and Sasha can feel the words vibrating where his palms rest on Zhenya’s chest.

“Bastard,” Sasha says, not bothering to hide his fondness – of _course_ Zhenya would be contrary about it. “It would kill you to just fucking go along, wouldn’t it?” He can't decide whether he'd rather hug Zhenya for being so thoroughly himself, or bite him for being such a shit.

Zhenya tips his head back and gives Sasha a knowing look. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me if I did,” he says, which is uncomfortably accurate. He repeats, more seriously, “Slow. And bondage. All right?”

“Fine with me,” Sasha says. He’s never minded Zhenya trussing him up, even if he doesn’t personally get much out of it.

He knows himself well enough to know that, once he gets started with _his_ side of the game, he won’t want to stop until the scene is done, so he offers, “I’ll let you go first, if you want.” Then he grins, sharp. “Until I get bored.” 

“Bored!” Zhenya scowls at Sasha, pretending to be outraged - the gleam of amusement in his eyes gives the game away. “When I’m done," he declares, "you tell me if you were bored.” He tugs Sasha down vindictively for another kiss, but his lips are gentle against Sasha's. When the kiss breaks, he asks, “Anything else?”

Sasha shakes his head, ignoring the little thrill of nervousness building in his stomach. “I’m ready if you are.”

Zhenya grins, wide. “Then get naked.”

 

II.

 

Once Sasha's finished stripping, he watches bemusedly as Zhenya removes the comforter from the other bed and lays it out flat on the biggest patch of open floor.

When Zhenya sees that Sasha’s clothes are off, he beckons Sasha over and has him lie down on the comforter. He fusses over Sasha’s position, nudging him this way and that and grumbling orders when Sasha doesn’t move fast enough, until Sasha is positioned parallel to the short end of the comforter, a few feet from the edge, with the comforter underneath him from neck to calf.

“What the fuck are you up to?” Sasha asks, intrigued.

Zhenya just smiles. “You’ll see.” He folds the extra short bit of comforter over Sasha and tucks it under Sasha on his other side.

Sasha bites down a laugh, charmed. He knows Zhenya likes to fuss over and pamper his partners, but he wasn’t exactly expecting _this_.

“You’re tucking me in?” Sasha asks, and he thinks ruefully, _I must look even shittier than I feel_.

But Zhenya shakes his head. He nudges Sasha’s side, nods his head at the remaining length of comforter, and says, “Roll, Sasha.”

Confused, Sasha repeats, “Roll…” before he realizes what Zhenya is doing. “You’re turning me into an Ovechkin blin!” he exclaims, surprised into a laugh. He’s used to Zhenya improvising restraints, but this is a new one. "I would be the most delicious blin of all," he informs Zhenya solemnly.

Zhenya gives him an indulgent look. “Roll, Sasha,” he repeats. “And don’t make me say it a third time.”

Once he’s rolled up, Zhenya drags him a few feet until his head is close to the foot of the bed and his feet are out in open floor space. Then Zhenya stands over him, feet planted close to either side of Sasha’s torso, and asks, “Can you move your arms?”

Sasha tries, and—no. He’d laughed, but this turns out to be a surprisingly effective method of bondage. Zhenya's good at what he does.

“Good.” Zhenya sits down on the floor, against the foot of the bed, and pulls Sasha into the vee of his legs. “Hello, Sash’ka,” he murmurs against Sasha’s temple, pressing a kiss there.

He doesn’t make a move to do anything else—not a word, not a touch—and as the seconds pass without distraction, Sasha’s mind slips backward, remembering the last minutes of the game ticking down, the feeling of futility—

 _No_.

The whole point of this was not to have to remember, not to dwell: to block it out. Sasha needs to be _doing_ something, or having something done to him. He starts squirming in the blanket, trying to loosen it, trying to wriggle his way out, but Zhenya flicks him in the ear and says, “Stop that.”

“Then fucking _do_ something,” Sasha says, surprising himself with the force of his own frustration. “I need—”

“So impatient,” Zhenya chides, wrapping his arms around Sasha and squeezing until Sasha grudgingly stops squirming. Then Zhenya takes a deep breath, and says quietly, “Sasha, you did well.”

Sasha goes rigid. Between gritted teeth, he snaps, “You better be fucking talking about how well I rolled myself up in this—”

“You know I’m not.” The words are low and even.

Sasha forces himself to exhale, trying to breathe out the creeping tension wound up in his shoulders and neck. “We lost,” he grits out, resenting that he even has to fucking say this, when they both know it too well. “We lost and I was barely fucking _there_ the whole tournament, and the whole reason I kissed you in the first place was to keep from thinking about it, so—”

“Too bad,” Zhenya says. His voice betrays no hint of sympathy. After fucking _years_ of Sasha teasing him for being a feather-pillow dom, apparently he’s picked tonight to play stern.

“Fuck you,” Sasha replies sharply, curling his hands into fists inside the blanket. He doesn’t know what’s going on here, but it’s not what he expected, and he doesn’t like it. “This isn’t what I fucking signed up for—”

Zhenya kisses his temple again and murmurs, “You know your safeword, if you want to use it.”

“You know how to shut the fuck up, if you want to do _that_ ,” Sasha snaps. This—the sniping back and forth—this is okay. It’s comfortable, and it keeps his mind off the Games. So, fine: he can do this all fucking night.

But that’s not what Zhenya wants.

“I could stop talking,” Zhenya agrees calmly. “But I don’t want to. Look, Sasha… it wasn’t your fault.”

“Fuck you!” Sasha rams his head backward into Zhenya’s shoulder, probably with a worse effect on his head than on Zhenya. Why does Zhenya have to keep bringing it back to the fucking Games, when he knows that’s the last thing Sasha wants? Why can’t he fucking leave it _alone_?

“It _wasn’t_ your fault,” Zhenya insists, so earnestly that it makes Sasha physically cringe. “You played so well, and I am so—”

Sasha starts thrashing in earnest. A corner of his mind knows that he can’t break free of the damn blanket, but he doesn’t give a shit: he knows what Zhenya’s about to say and he won’t fucking allow it. “Don’t you dare,” he growls, “don’t you fucking dare—”

“I’m so proud of you, Sasha,” Zhenya says, undeterred, and it hurts just as bad as Sasha was imagining. His eyes sting, and his throat feels clogged – he can’t seem to pull together any response.

Zhenya continues, in the silence, “I was proud to have you on my wing, you—”

“Go to _hell_!” Sasha shouts, angry at everything: at his voice for sounding so thick, at Zhenya for making him think about exactly the thing he was trying to run from, but most of all at himself. It would be one thing if what Zhenya was saying was true, but Sasha knows it isn’t. He knows what was expected of him, and he knows he didn’t justify that faith. He failed, utterly: he let Zhenya down, let his team down - he let his whole fucking _country_ down. How dare Zhenya, how _dare_ he rub Sasha’s face in that failure? How _dare_ he talk like he still has faith in Sasha, in spite of everything?

“Fuck you, fuck you, _fuck_ you,” Sasha is chanting under his breath, still struggling wildly against the confining hold of the blanket and Zhenya’s arms around him. He’s trying to drown out the sound of Zhenya’s undeserved praise, but it doesn’t work – the flow of Zhenya’s words just keeps coming, as inexorable as the strength of his bonds around Sasha’s body. When Zhenya tries to stroke Sasha’s face, Sasha snaps at his fingers, snarling—but Zhenya doesn’t get angry, doesn’t try to hurt him back; his voice stays low and gentle and excruciatingly sincere.

Sasha loses himself in the struggle, even as his body tires and wetness trickles from the corners of his eyes. He knows it’s useless, but his body keeps fighting out of pure instinct even as exhaustion seeps into his muscles. Eventually, he’s too worn out to do more than rock himself from side to side, as Zhenya murmurs, “That’s it. You can rest now. You did so well. You deserve to rest, Sasha. You deserve _good_ things. You do.”

“You’re an asshole,” Sasha croaks, and he means it with all his heart. But he’s not—he’s surprised to realize—actually angry. Not anymore. In fact, now that he’s worn himself out with the fighting, he feels better – cleaned out, somehow. And Zhenya's words, too, even though they hurt, mended something between them that Sasha hadn't even consciously realized was broken. He'd taken it for granted that of course Zhenya would blame Sasha, of course he would be disappointed in Sasha - but Sasha can't believe that now. Zhenya might bullshit with reporters, but he’d never do it in a scene: if he says he’s proud of Sasha, with Sasha bound and helpless in his care, then he means it. That, Sasha cannot doubt.

Zhenya just chuckles at Sasha’s insult. “You’re one to talk.” He twists around to kiss Sasha on the mouth, coaxing Sasha’s lips open with his tongue. Then he uses a corner of the comforter to mop up Sasha’s face. “You okay?”

Grudgingly, Sasha admits, “Yes, I’m okay.” He glares up at Zhenya anyway, just on general principle, and says, “You know that was the _opposite_ of what I wanted.”

Zhenya makes an apologetic face, wrinkling up his nose. “I know,” he replies. “But… I thought it might be what you needed.” He gives Sasha a hopeful look.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Sasha snaps—but fairness compels him to admit, “I feel better, so. Maybe you’re not a total disaster of a dom.”

Zhenya kisses him again, closed-mouthed, and says softly, “I had a good teacher.”

Meaning Sasha, of course – it would be one thing if he meant it as flattery, but, being Zhenya, he’s utterly sincere.

“You can’t just _say_ things like that when I’m mad at you,” Sasha gripes as Zhenya begins to unroll him. It doesn’t escape Sasha’s notice that the tightness around Zhenya’s eyes has eased, and his shoulders look straighter, as if tending to Sasha’s wounds had healed some of his own as well. _Good_ , Sasha thinks. He can feel better about taking over the rest of the scene, chasing what _he_ wants, now that he knows Zhenya’s already gotten what he needs.

“I can say what I want,” Zhenya answers tartly. His hands are careful as he nudges Sasha to keep moving. “Didn’t you learn that?” He leaves one last kiss on Sasha’s forehead as he folds back the last layer of blanket.

 

III.

 

The air feels chilly on Sasha’s bare skin as the blanket is pulled away. Once he’s unrolled, he climbs to his feet, feeling a little stiff. He gives Zhenya a look up and down. Zhenya is hard—no surprise, since wrapping people up and lavishing them with praise is exactly his taste—and still wearing all his clothes, which is kind of a shame.

Being bound is not _Sasha’s_ taste, so he’s not hard yet. But he knows that the rest of the scene is his, now. His heart skips with anticipation. He closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath, switching tracks in his mind. He’s not taking what Zhenya’s giving, anymore; now it’s Zhenya’s turn to take what Sasha is dishing out. That’s a thought worth enjoying.

Sasha opens his eyes and grins at Zhenya, letting his hunger show. “You know pissing me off just makes me hit harder,” he says, feeling the heady sharpness rising up in him again – the part of him that digs in with hands and teeth, that sees the soft, tender spots on other people’s bodies and imagines them marked and throbbing. Sasha’s particular brand of sadism isn’t bound up with discipline—he doesn’t get any extra enjoyment from the sense that the partner he’s hurting has earned that pain by transgressing—but it does feed on frustration, on challenge, on a sense of being _pushed_ or thwarted. Not on real anger, which is too dangerous to play with safely… but being stuffed in a blanket and told a bunch of stuff he didn’t want to hear about is just the kind of thing that'll get his motor running.

Zhenya shrugs, unconcerned. “It was worth it,” he says, stepping closer to Sasha.

Sasha meets him halfway with a kiss, keeping his teeth out of it because lips are fragile and he’d promised Zhenya no blood. The skin of Zhenya’s neck is tougher, though, so when the kiss is over, Sasha has no compunctions about biting _there_. Zhenya grunts in pain, and Sasha gentles his bite a little. This isn’t Zhenya’s game, even though he agrees to play it sometimes with Sasha, and Sasha tries to be considerate of that.

Next, he digs his fingertips into Zhenya’s hips until Zhenya flinches. Sasha pauses to enjoy that reaction—Zhenya flinches so nicely, mostly because his lanky frame amplifies every twitch—and then drags his nails up Zhenya’s sides under his shirt, hard enough that Zhenya wrenches away, wincing.

“Those were your freebies,” he tells Sasha, eyes narrowed. The bite mark on his neck is angry red, and the skin is still indented from Sasha’s teeth; just looking at it makes Sasha’s cock fill.

“You’re going to make me fight you for the rest, aren’t you?” Sasha asks, not even pretending to be bothered by the idea.

Zhenya nods. A smirk touches his lips and he settles, maybe unconsciously, into a loose fighting stance.

Sasha smiles like a wolf. “Yes. Good.”

He goes for Zhenya’s shirt first, tearing it open in one sharp jerk and grinning as buttons go flying. Zhenya shoves him in response, two hands planted on Sasha’s chest, pouting. “Fuck you, I liked that shirt,” he complains.

“Do I look like I care what you like?” Sasha asks, rolling his eyes. He gets his hands into the neck of Zhenya’s undershirt and rips that down the middle, too, just to be a dick, laughing at Zhenya’s outraged “Hey!”

Zhenya tries to push him away again, but Sasha is in a groove, now. He elbows Zhenya in the gut, making him wheeze, then tears open his fly while he’s doubled over. With Zhenya off-balance, it’s easy to trip him onto the bed, and once he’s down, Sasha makes quick work of his pants and briefs.

As Zhenya curses him roundly and scoots backward on the bed, Sasha surveys his work with satisfaction. “You know,” he comments, rubbing idly at his own cock, half-hard already, “at first I wanted you naked, but now that I see you like this, I think this is even better.” He’s got unobstructed access to Zhenya’s lower half, and he _really_ likes the look of Zhenya’s chest framed by the ripped-up ruin Sasha made of his clothes. The only downside is that it cuts down on the available skin for Sasha to mark up, but he supposes he can content himself with Zhenya’s chest, ass, and legs. After all, with Zhenya, there’s a _lot_ of leg… and a pretty healthy helping of ass, too.

Zhenya’s response is to purse his lips and narrow his eyes impatiently. “Were you going to try to hit me, or…”

“Try,” Sasha scoffs, and launches himself at Zhenya.

They’ve done this before—fighting as foreplay—and even though Zhenya’s big and strong enough to take Sasha in a fair fight, it always goes Sasha’s way, because it’s _not_ a fair fight. Sasha is trying to hurt Zhenya, but Zhenya isn’t trying to hurt him back – just trying to hold him off, make him work for it, frustrate him. He can grab Sasha’s wrists, but Sasha will just bury his teeth in the closest available patch of Zhenya’s skin; he can plant a hand on Sasha’s face and stop him from biting, but that leaves Sasha with a hand free to score red lines down Zhenya’s chest or slap a bright pink handprint onto Zhenya’s pale thigh. He can try to pin Sasha down—and he does—but Sasha’s had enough of being pinned tonight, and he turns the tables on Zhenya in seconds. Zhenya doesn’t make it easy for him, of course… but that just gets Sasha harder.

“You wriggle like a fucking fish,” Sasha pants, bringing all his weight to bear on top of Zhenya, keeping him still long enough that Sasha can wind up and backhand him across the face. Then Zhenya squirms an arm free and grabs Sasha’s wrist, tugging him off-balance, and the battle is on again. The point isn’t to win; Sasha doesn’t even know what “winning” would mean between the two of them. No, the point is for Sasha to lose himself in the bloom of bruises across Zhenya’s skin and the silken sounds of Zhenya’s gasps, to forget everything but Zhenya’s pain and their shared pleasure. And he does. Zhenya’s blanket stuff was good, Sasha won’t deny that – but _this_ is what truly feeds him. It burns through him like a purifying fire, consuming the dead wood of guilt and worry, and leaving him with nothing but the pain or pleasure of the present moment.

In the end, it’s a little _too_ good: he keeps chasing one more blow, one more bite, past the point when he has the patience for the time it would take to fuck Zhenya, so he contents himself instead with the slick clutch of Zhenya’s thighs, smeared with lube and deliciously tight with muscle. He lets his eyes sink shut as the tightness in his groin grows and grows and then, in a hot rush, suddenly unspools. _Damn, that was good_ , Sasha thinks, with what’s left of his brain.

Zhenya generously lets Sasha have a minute to catch his breath with his face plastered up against Zhenya’s shirt.

“I’ll get you yours,” Sasha mumbles, pulling himself together.

He can feel Zhenya’s laugh through his whole body. “Any minute now,” he teases, with surprising good humor – he’s been hard and waiting for longer than Sasha has.

“Getting there,” Sasha promises. He pushes Zhenya up the bed and flips him on his back. As he nuzzles the base of Zhenya’s cock, he starts, “Can I—”

“No teeth,” Zhenya says, long-suffering – he really _does_ know Sasha too well.

Sasha attempts, “Just a little bi—”

“ _No_.”

“Fun-killer,” Sasha mutters, mostly for form’s sake, before fitting his mouth over the head of Zhenya’s cock and starting to suck. He’s always enjoyed this—even when he’s not allowed to use his teeth—but his favorite part is the delightful, wrecked noises he can pull from a partner’s lips. Sasha is and will always be a sadist, but on some level, a groan is a groan, and a whimper is a whimper, and knowing he has the power to play Zhenya’s body like an instrument is a rush whether he’s playing it to the beat of pain or pleasure.

It’s not long before Zhenya is coming in his mouth; Sasha promptly spits it right back out onto Zhenya’s belly, enjoying the way it makes Zhenya sputter in outrage.

“You had it coming,” Sasha says comfortably over the sound of Zhenya’s grumbling. He lies sprawled on the bed, half-tangled up with Zhenya’s long, skinny legs, and drifts for a while—dozes, even—before the disgustingness of being glued to Zhenya by spunk and sweat becomes too pressing to ignore. He pokes Zhenya in the ribs.

As Zhenya protests, Sasha says, “Come on, shower. You disgust me, and I disgust myself.” There’s a part of him that enjoys seeing Zhenya covered in the evidence of their shared debauchery… but there’s a bigger part of him that’s ready to slip his clean body between some clean sheets and let sleep wash the last of the grit out of the bloody scrapes left by today’s game.

 

IV.

 

Zhenya is always unabashedly clingy after sex, and tonight is no different: he gloms onto Sasha on the way to the shower and keeps skin contact the whole time they’re washing up, which shows some talent. “You should play basketball,” Sasha says dryly when Zhenya plasters himself against Sasha’s back, one arm around his waist. “I think this is how they play defense.”

“What would you know about playing defense?” Zhenya chirps back.

Sasha winces, but what he feels is the twinge of a wound already closed over and halfway healed, not the burn of a gash still raw and open. The loss will always hurt—even the best scene can’t put a gold medal around his neck or add ten goals to his line on the scoresheet—but he can think about it now without feeling like he’s going to crawl out of his skin. That’s worth a lot.

Zhenya peers at Sasha over his shoulder, frowning softly. “Too soon?”

Sasha shakes his head. “No need for the kid gloves. It’s… it’s not too much.”

“Good.” Zhenya reaches for the bar of soap and starts to work up a lather.

Sasha grabs his own bottle of body wash and flips open the cap. He stops, though, and takes a breath; there’s one more thing he needs to say. “Hey, Zhenya…”

“Mm?”

“Thanks. For all of it.” It’s easier to say like this, when Zhenya can’t see his face.

Zhenya presses a light kiss to the back of his neck. “It was what I needed, too. All of it.”

"Good," Sasha says, voice shaky with a combination of adrenaline drop-off and relief. He’d figured that the first half of the scene was good for Zhenya—he’d _seen_ it in Zhenya’s body, afterward—but he’s glad to hear that his own part of the scene helped, too, even if it all it provided was a distraction and an orgasm. There's value in both, and Sasha was happy to provide them.

After they dry off, Sasha inspects Zhenya’s body and satisfies himself that none of the scratches, bruises, and bite marks he left are deeper or more serious than he intended. “Anything hurt more than you expected?” he asks. Zhenya shakes his head. “You want salve or ice?”

Zhenya shakes his head again and yawns. “Just cuddles and sleep.”

Sasha makes sure they split some Gatorade and energy bars before they tumble into bed. Once they’re under the covers, Zhenya throws an arm and a leg over Sasha and lets out a long, satisfied sigh. He looks tired, for sure, but also warm and well-fucked, and much, much looser than he did before the scene.

Sasha imagines that if he were to look in the mirror, he’d see a similar expression. “We’ve still got it,” he says, with a half-smirk that turns into a yawn.

“We do,” Zhenya agrees.

It’s a comforting thought.

Sasha runs a hand over the back of Zhenya’s head and makes himself say out loud what he’s been feeling for the last couple of hours, obvious and dumb-sounding as it is.

“It fucking sucks that we lost.”

“Yeah,” Zhenya says simply.

Sasha lets that just sit silently between them for a minute. It does suck. But now they can talk about it, and maybe even move on. That’s worth a lot.

Trying to look on the positive side, he says, “At least you can be happy for your Sidney, though, yes?”

“He’s not _my_ Sidney,” Zhenya responds for what must be the hundredth time. This, too, is old and familiar territory: Sasha’s been teasing Zhenya about his protectiveness toward his captain for years now, and Zhenya always makes it too easy.

“Not your Sidney, no,” Sasha says, straight-faced, enjoying this. “Nothing to do with you… That’s why you had to give him such a nice little pep talk—”

Zhenya groans loudly and shoves his face into the pillow. “For fuck’s sake—I already got reamed out by Pasha for ‘fraternizing with the enemy,’ all right—”

“I’m just giving you shit,” Sasha says, feeling slightly guilty about the teasing now that Zhenya's reminded him of the less-funny parts of the whole thing. Datsyuk wasn’t alone in giving Zhenya a hard time about his chat with Crosby, and Sasha should have said something to Zhenya about it before. Well, better late than never.

Sasha tugs Zhenya’s face away from the pillow until Zhenya meets his eyes. “Hey,” Sasha says, in a low voice, “I know Crosby’s not yours, like, collar-yours. But he’s your friend and your teammate, and you’re protective of him. As you should be. Pasha can go fuck himself if he doesn’t understand that,” he adds. Different doms can have different interpretations of what makes for good dominance, but from where Sasha’s standing, there’s no question Zhenya did the right thing by checking on Crosby. Sasha would have done the same if one of his sub teammates had been on an opposing Olympic team.

Zhenya takes in a shaky breath and holds Sasha’s gaze for a moment before looking down. He looks happy, though. Softly, he says, “Thank you, Sasha.” Then he inches a little closer, until his breath curls over Sasha’s skin.

“You gonna sleep?” Sasha asks.

“Yeah.” Zhenya’s eyes have already drifted shut.

Sasha still has a little adrenaline to burn off before he can sleep. He asks, “You mind if I play around on my phone for a little?”

Zhenya shakes his head no. “Don’t read any news,” he warns as he burrows into the covers.

Sasha snorts. He never reads his own press, and he’s sure as fuck not going to start tonight. “I’m not that stupid,” he tells Zhenya.

Zhenya, of course, somehow manages to make a skeptical face without bothering to open his eyes.

“Asshole,” Sasha says fondly, kissing the top of Zhenya’s head. “Sleep tight, Zhen’chka.”

“Mhmm,” Zhenya mumbles, and then he’s out, leaving Sasha with the blue light of his phone screen and the familiar, comfortable rhythm of Zhenya’s breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback is loved! Even just pasting a line or two that stood out to you means a lot. <3


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